"YOS" 2003 Obituary

YOSHINAKA o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-12 published
A sleeping tiger of baseball
Founded in 1914, the Asahi team made history. This year, largely
because of the efforts of its catcher, the team made the Canadian
Baseball Hall of Fame
By Tom HAWTHORN,
Special to The Globe and Mail Friday, December
12, 2003 - Page R17
Victoria -- Ken
KUTSUKAKE was a catcher for the storied Asahi
baseball team of Vancouver, which disbanded when its Japanese-Canadian
players were interned during the Second World War.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE, who has died in Toronto, aged 92, helped keep
the team's memory alive over the years. He organized an Asahi
reunion at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Don Mills,
Ontario, in 1972, ending, if only temporarily, a diaspora of
the diamond that had seen players sent to work camps, ghost towns,
sugar-beet farms, and, in a handful of cases, Japan.
Earlier this year, the amateur club was inducted into the Canadian
BaseballHall of Fame in Saint Marys, Ontario Mr.
KUTSUKAKE attended
the ceremonies in June, even taking part in a golf tournament.
TheAsahi roster shortens with each passing season. Mr.
KUTSUKAKE
is the third player to die since the induction. He was predeceased
by outfielder Bob
HIGUCHI, 95, of Pickering, Ontario, and pitcher
George YOSHINAKA, 81, of Lethbridge, Alberta. The Asahi are disappearing
like runners left stranded at the end of an inning. Only six
players and a team official are believed to still be alive, the
lone survivors as the club approaches the 90th anniversary of
its founding in 1914.
The Asahi drew their players from the Little Tokyo neighbourhood
surrounding their home field at the Powell Street Grounds (today's
Oppenheimer Park) in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The Asahi
were physically slight compared to their opponents, among whom
were beefy longshoremen, so they depended on slick fielding,
larcenous base running and hitting so precise that it was said
they could bunt with a chopstick. They were nimble Davids competing
against slugging Goliaths.
The team (asa for morning, hi for sun) sometimes won games in
which they failed to record a hit. Their style of play, which
came to be called Brain Ball, earned them a following among discerning
Caucasian fans. In Little Tokyo, they were gods in woolen flannels.
"We were the toast of the town," Mr.
KUTSUKAKE told me earlier
this year. "To be an Asahi ballplayer meant lots to a lot of
people."
It all ended so quickly. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, it was
heard around the world. In British Columbia, all people of Japanese
ancestry were ordered removed from the coast as enemy aliens.
A neighbourhood team lost its neighbourhood and the Asahi never
played again.
Kenneth Hisao
KUTSUKAKE was born in Vancouver on May 25, 1911.
The Asahi had deep roots in the community and he joined the club's
youth team when he was 12 as a Clover (Go-gun). Blessed with
a strong throwing arm even at that young age, he was taught to
play the sport's toughest position. The neighbourhood boys gave
him the sing-song nickname, "Catcha-Catcha-
KUTSUKAKE."
He moved up the Asahi ranks over the years. From 9-to-5, Mr.
KUTSUKAKE worked for a company making boxes. After work and on
weekends and holidays, he could be found on the baseball diamond.
Finally, in 1938, Mr.
KUTSUKAKE became the starting catcher for
the parent club.
Adept at blocking wild pitches, he was known for his throwing
arm, a disincentive for rivals eager to mimic the Asahi on the
base paths.
On September 18, 1941, he went 0-for-2 before being pulled for
a pinch-hitter in his team's final at-bat in a 3-1 loss to a
club sponsored by The Angelus, a hotel. It would be the Asahi's
final game.
A few months later, his home was seized, as was his family's
Powell Street rooming house.
In 1942, Mr.
KUTSUKAKE was ordered by Canadian authorities to
leave his birthplace for the crimes of his ancestry. On that
terrible winter day, when he had to reduce 31 years of life to
a single suitcase, Mr.
KUTSUKAKE packed for an unknown life in
a relocation camp. Alongside family photos, he placed his cleats,
shin guards, catcher's mask, chest protector and his Asahi uniform.
For Mr. KUTSUKAKE, the equipment was a daily reminder that while
authorities could seize his home, deny him his job, and compromise
his freedom, no one could stop him from playing baseball.
He was sent to Kaslo on Kootenay Lake in the British Columbia
Interior, where he was joined by Asahi pitcher Nag
NISHIHARA.
One of their first acts in the camp was to form a baseball team,
an action that was also occurring in other ghost towns and internment
camps.
(Mr. KUTSUKAKE's father, Tsugio, had complained when he was ordered
to leave behind his wife and daughters. The senior Mr.
KUTSUKAKE
was instead sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Angler, Ontario,
where inmates wore dark uniforms with large circles on the back,
a bull's-eye target for sharpshooters should any try to escape.)
On Dominion Day, 1943, four teams of interned players met in
a one-day showdown in Slocan City, British Columbia Lemon Creek
beat New Denver 13-2 for the championship, while Slocan and Kaslo,
featuring a battery of Mr.
KUTSUKAKE and Mr.
NISHIHARA, were
eliminated earlier in the day. More than 500 spectators watched
the tournament.
"Ahhh," said Mr.
KUTSUKAKE, still sore about a loss 60 years
earlier, "Lemon Creek had the most Asahi players. They should
have won."
After the war ended, those of Japanese ancestry were forbidden
from returning to the coast. Mr.
KUTSUKAKE wound up in Montreal,
where he played for the semi-professional Atwater team in 1947.
He moved to Toronto the following year, where he could be found
behind the plate at Christie Pits. He also had great success
as a coach and manager, winning a West Toronto minor championship
with the Westerns midget team in 1950. He later won a city championship
with the Bestway Nisei, a team comprised of the Canadian-born
sons of Japanese immigrants.
In 1956, he managed Honest Ed's Nisei, a mixed-race team, to
a senior city championship. A delighted Ed
MIRVISH feted the
players with a lavish banquet and presented each with a commemorative
wrist watch.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE worked for many years at Iwata Travel in Toronto.
Until recently, he volunteered at a seniors home, providing prepared
Japanese lunches for residents.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE rejoiced in the belated recognition afforded his
old team. He threw out a ceremonial opening pitch at a Toronto
Blue Jays game at SkyDome in May, 2002, and was deeply touched
by induction into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
"Naturally, I'm honoured," he said. "It was a big surprise. I
never expected such recognition."
Mr. KUTSUKAKE also appears in the recent National Film Board
documentary Sleeping Tigers, which recounts the history of the
Asahi team and its players. The photographs he saved during the
evacuation have been displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum and
included in Pat Adachi's 1992 book, Asahi: A Legend in Baseball.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE died in his sleep on November 22 at Toronto Grace
Hospital, where he was attending his second wife, Rose, who has
been diagnosed with a brain tumour. His wife of 50 years survives
him, as do sisters Satoko and Eiko, both of Toronto. He was predeceased
by brothers Sekio and Ray, an Asahi pitcher. A first marriage
ended in divorce.